dr. selene calder

She knew she was here, had heard about the pretty dancer, so precise and beautiful it made your heart ache and your eyes water. Fill you with so much emotion you didn't know what to do with it until it bursts out. An innate talent, a ballerina so good it seemed to know every move before it was taught, before it was shown. She had seen her name around, plastered in posters that spoke of a grandiose performance, a beautiful show. Had felt the strange prickling at her chest, of a pain she had long thought forgotten. Like a wound being reopened, stitches pulled apart mercilessly.

“You’re here.”

The words leave her mouth as flat fact, no name attached, no invitation offered. And oh, how easily Jade says her name - with such casual ease - as if that intimacy cost her nothing. It still rankles. Jade walked away once without looking back, and somehow that hurts as much as the accusations she dragged with her: witch blood for hunter’s grief, blame sharpened into a weapon. Selene can nearly taste the metallic echo of it on her tongue.

Across the polished floor Jade stands tall, green-flame eyes still precise enough to map Selene’s soul—or carve it out. Distrust buried so deep it’s practically fossilized sparks again to restless life. Selene forces her spine straighter, dancer-poised, even as rage prowls behind her ribs. Emotions blur every future path she reads, but she swims through them anyway: one branch ends in bitter silence, another in blood-bright ruin, and a third—most dangerous—in the old, aching tenderness that terrifies her more than any blade.

Blair hadn't been watching Daniella and the fucking witch all night. She had been too busy making connections, drinking, dancing with any number of people, and not murdering any hunters despite the rage that boiled under her skin. She didn't have time to be watching the two gorgeous blondes who had walked in together.   The vodka burned as it slide down her throat as she knocked back another shot of the clear liquid, hoping the burn would erase the bitter taste that hadn't left her mouth most of the evening. Danielle had left Phial, which Blair couldn't fault her for that. New leadership had left much to be desired, and Blair couldn't ask her to stay somewhere that didn't make her happy even if Blair missed her comforting presence in the coven.  It was natural for Daniella to make connections in the coven she was now offering her expertise to, and to arrive with someone from the Augury circle with all the politics of the conclave. But fuck did the witch need to be that god damn beautiful, as much as it killed Blair to admit it she had eyes.  Maybe it was time to to say hello to her friend and meet her lovely date. A plan was brewing in the back of Blairs mind. Born of six vodka shots and an emotion she didn't want to try to name because that would mean looking deeper. 

Selene considers herself someone who hovers at the fringes of Augury; Daniella—still new to the coven—occupies the same liminal space. So when Daniella asked her to be her date to the Conclave, Selene merely lifted a clean, arched eyebrow, silent in her judgment while she read the futures unfurling before them. And sure enough, the truth came out: a jealousy ploy, old as court dances and twice as entertaining.

Fine. If they’re going to do this, they’ll do it right. Selene never leaves a performance half-baked.

Five precious seconds ahead, she watches the timelines blossom: a subtle hitch in a stranger’s stride, the inevitable trip, the glass shooting upward in a graceful parabola. For extra drama, that wine ought to have splashed scarlet down her gown. Instead, Selene calculates the rescue. In that fraction of borrowed time she pivots, lifting Daniella as though the two of them are deep into Swan Lake’s Act II. Daniella’s heels sweep clear of the debris; crystal detonates harmlessly against the parquet.

“It’s all right,” Selene says, voice velvet over steel as she lowers Daniella to the floor. “Some of us are simply born without grace.” The line lands smooth as silk, yet every syllable is a blade angled toward their uninvited actor.

She turns to Daniella—eyes wide with dead certainty. No spark of teasing flares; Selene plays her part with the somber finality of a curtain-call bow. “Daniella, darling, do you know this person?” The question hovers, heavy as stage lights.

Servers rush in to sweep shards away while chandeliers scatter fractured rainbows across Selene's sequins. Selene’s shoulders relax, but only theatrically; inside she is already slipping into the next measure of the dance.

@blccmedrage

Akemi knew that he'd be nothing without Tetsuya. And while he appreciated and respected everything the man had taught him years ago, Miyazaki had to die. He was too powerful -- the magic he knew potentially unstoppable. And if he kept teaching others what he'd taught Akemi, there would be more Witches that acted like Gods. Akemi couldn't allow that to happen.

"If you can manage." He nodded as he stood in place, eyes tracking her every movement. His lips lifted upward slightly as she took his dagger from him and slipped it into her jacket. Interesting that she hadn't chosen to use it. Just take it from him. But he refused to correct her, or to warn her what that dagger might do if the metal sliced through skin. She'd find out, eventually. By her own mistakes, or from Akemi's intent.

The bo arcs in front of him and he does as she demands, taking two steps back. Then, she moves it towards one side, pausing with precision before it collides with his body. It was as if she was using her skill to try to... intimidate him? Akemi couldn't help but chuckle at the display. Had Miyazaki showed her such showmanship?

"Arrogance." He mused before she started her five seconds. He didn't move from the spot she'd pressed him towards, allowing her to show off her skills -- ha. Within three seconds, the end of the bo is connecting with his body. Akemi grunted at the shove, blowing out a breath as he remained where he was. Then, the end of the pole collides with the back of his knee, causing it to buckle for a moment. He doesn't fall and it takes half a second for him to balance his weight again.

"It seems as though Master Miyazaki has not taught you properly." Akemi muttered lowly as his hand jutted out, grasping the bo without even looking in her direction. First, he yanked the wooden stick from her grasp, then, he used it to smack her directly on her ass before the air protested as he sent it flying across the room. It hit a wall and then clattered to the ground.

"I gave you five seconds." He said and in one fluid, quiet motion, he was standing behind her. "You got to choose your weapon--" Delicate fingers coaxed the dagger from her pocket; the metal vibrating against his fingers -- begging to be used. "You chose a wooden stick." The dagger lifted, dragging against the back of her neck. "And you also stopped fighting. Big fucking mistake."

His hand immediately wrapped around the back of her neck, his skin squishing against the blood that bubbled out of the incision. "You need a new teacher." Akemi used his strength to shove her to her knees. "One that teaches you to pick fights with those of your skill set." His eyes flickered towards the door for a brief moment, then back down at her. "What do you think your instructor would think of this pathetic show?"

Akemi's fingers dug into her neck, although, he knew that the numbing would take affect soon. The dagger wasn't just a dagger. Nothing that Akemi kept with him ever was just a simple object. He'd manipulated the metal, imbedding magic within it, causing it to have a numbing affect on whoever's blood it touched. It had been meant for Tetsuya Miyazaki. But it could be used for his students, too.

She had stopped fighting. Yes. She had. But not out of mercy or deference. Her taps had been warnings—signals sent across the air like coded flares, each light touch a threshold he’d been steadily crossing. She hadn’t wanted to strike to kill. Yet.

But her restraint reads as submission to him. And then the world tilts. She doesn’t see it—she feels it, the shift in air pressure, the flicker in his gaze before he moves. It isn’t speed. It’s decision. That’s what throws her. The absolute certainty of his intent, and the way the futures tremble and shatter in response.

She sees five of them—then three—then none.

The dagger’s hum deepens as he draws it. Not a just weapon—her skin prickles even before she feels the slice.

It isn’t deep, but it doesn’t have to be.

Pain blooms bright, and something else rushes in behind it—cold, insidious, blooming through the back of her neck like frost on glass.Selene gasps, not in pain but calculation, mind scrambling through possible tomorrows, trying to see the contours of what’s been done to her. The answer won’t come. There’s too much noise. His taunts. Her blood. Her fury.

"You need a new teacher." "What do you think your instructor would think of this pathetic show?"

“Oh, please,” she hisses through her teeth, staggered but upright, even as her legs threaten rebellion. “You think you’re offering guidance? Is this you pitching yourself as a mentor? What, did you fail your final exam? Is this your little return tour, trying to get your gold star from a teacher who doesn’t even mention you?” She spits the name like venom: “There is no Kae Miyazaki in Miyazaki-san’s archive. Not a word. You’re not even a regret.”

Then she moves.

Her whole body launches forward, pivoting from one grounded heel, and this time it’s not to spar—it’s to hurt. The first strike is a hammering punch toward his kidney, aimed to fold him sideways. The second is a palm to the throat—measured, surgical, aimed not to crush but to control. Her ballet-honed muscles deliver force with elegance, each strike a memory from another stage.

But something’s wrong.

Not wrong in her precision, but wrong in her body’s timing. The second strike slows just slightly. Like she’s dreaming through molasses. Her hands still know, but her blood is failing to carry the message. The dagger’s poison is working fast—faster than she accounted for.

She falters. A breath too long. 

Her fury spikes, volcanic in her chest, trying to override the numbing chill leaking into her limbs. But that anger only clouds her magic further—her gift, her sight—which begins to flicker like a dying projector reel.

One by one, the futures begin to vanish. Click. Click. Click. Hallway doors slamming shut, every path she might’ve taken locking behind her. 

No. No. Not yet.

She channels what’s left, pushes it through the haze, pulls together all remaining focus for one final strike—a second shot at his neck, as if that might undo everything. As if she can sever the timeline where he wins.

And that’s when her legs collapse.

"Oh, really? Two years?" His eyebrows rose, feigning impressed. Two years was nothing compared to him. And he doubted that she knew as much as he had, in that short amount of time. "When we are done here, you might not longer have a home." He said, as a matter of factly. "So I suggest that you bring your best."

Her comment earned her another smile. Feisty. "Can't it be both?" He cocked his head to the side, remaining in a relaxed state, as he watched her move towards him. Her movements were quiet. Not very precise. One shove to her side and she might just fall over from lack of balance.

This should be fun.

Akemi pulled his hand from his pocket, leaving the dagger behind. He didn't need a weapon in order to best her. And honestly, he wanted to see what she could do before he even tried to subdue her. "You and your concern for messes." Akemi chuckled and shook his head. "I propose a fourth. I will only use my hands but you can choose any weapon you want. Hell, you can have my dagger, if it pleases you." He said. "I am not leaving, little one. Nor are you leaving without being taught a lesson."

“So it’s Miyazaki. Tell me, is hubris hereditary or did you cultivate it all by yourself?”

His promise to raze her home flickers across her vision. Anger boils, but she locks it down; hot emotions bend the lens of foresight, and she needs the next five seconds perfect.

He brandishes the dagger, hilt first. Every viable branch says the same thing— take it. He’s offering you his weapon, hubris or not, take it. Selene plucks it from his palm with a ballerina’s precision. Steel hums against her pulse, shimmering with warped possibilities, as though the blade itself remembers old blood. She slips it into the small of her jacket, freeing her hands to claim the bo waiting just behind her ribs like an extra bone.

“‘Little one’ again, ” she muses, lifting the staff and letting its iron cap kiss the floorboards with a quiet tok, neat as a conductor’s down-beat. “Let’s keep a tally—a strike for every ‘little one,’ hmm?”

She advances—not to strike, merely to steer. Weight rolls through the balls of her feet, spine stacked, breath measured like a dancer marking time. The bo describes a slow crescent, more shepherd’s crook than cudgel, coaxing him two respectful paces toward the door.

“One,” she murmurs as the tip brushes the floor—her own private metronome. Another easy sweep parts the air just shy of his coat hem; enough wind to tug the fabric, not enough threat to bruise ego or skin. “Two. Your tab’s running up quickly.”

She feels the moment his shoulders tighten, the subtle lean left. Foresight blooms: half a second from now she’s already drifted sideways, letting any impulse he had spill harmlessly into vacant space. The lacquered end of the staff hovers an inch from the seam of his trousers, as polite and precise as a fingertip pausing on a chess piece.

“So, Miyazaki,” she says, voice cool, “what lesson is on today’s syllabus? Humility? Fear? Introductory footwork?” A faint smile tugs at her mouth—courteous, almost nurturing. “I adore a good curriculum. Lucky you’ve volunteered to be the demonstration.” The air around her shivers, threaded with barely contained chronomancy, ready to rewrite the next heartbeat the moment he chooses wrong. He gives her five seconds and Selene doesn’t hesitate. 

Five seconds: precisely the length of the world she sees ahead. Time dilates into brilliant shards—five heartbeats, five clean moves.Beat one — pivot: she pivots on her forward heel. Beat two — the arc: the bo telescopes from guiding arc to piston-thrust in a blink, precisely where her foresight labeled liver ± two centimeters. Beat three — impact: wood meets flesh with a hollow thwock, violent enough to steal breath before a cry can form. Beat four — rebound: as his diaphragm locks, she rolls her wrists, drawing the staff back and up. Beat five — return stroke: She cracks the return stroke across the hinge of his knee; the joint buckles, argument folding with it. The future she’d selected arrives right on schedule: Miyazaki teeters. “There’s your five seconds.”

His fingers tighten around the handle of the dagger. He was itching to use it. He needed to release the anger that began filling in his body from the moment he stepped into the dojo. Tatsuya could have been there. He could still come, if he suspected something wrong. Akemi was so fucking close to his prey. So close to having this hunt over and his old Master dead.

Akemi's eyes narrowed as he kept his mouth shut. He'd argue that he wasn't actually trespassing. That wherever Tetsuya went, so could Akemi. But this woman didn't know who he was, nor did he have any intention of letting her in on that secret. "I'd prefer the latter. " Her, directly correcting him. It would show him just how much she knew. It might also prove to be amusing.

"What I've lost." A chuckle as he shook his head slightly. He'd lost a partnership. A friend. Someone he had looked up to for so long. Someone who gave him good attention. Who Akemi had thought, cared. He'd lost his only sense of the word family; slipping down the drain the moment he realized just how dangerous it was. "You are not the owner of this place, therefore, it is none of your business."

She shouldn't have been there. Akemi had waited until after closing. This woman was just in the place at the wrong fucking time. It was her fault for what happened next -- not his. "Go on, little one." He coaxed her, gently. "Show me exactly how you might defend your and your instructor's honor."

Her own schooling covers the full breadth of dojo practice and then some, magic braided neatly through muscle memory. From the quick shimmer of near-futures she can tell he is accomplished—too accomplished. In the span of five seconds he slashes through three discrete attack lines; most opponents manage one, two at best. Five seconds can be an eternity if you let it breathe. He, however, keeps each possible outcome balanced on a knife-edge. Irritating—but information.

“I’m not the legal owner,” she concedes, voice still measured, “but this is my home. Two years of dawn drills, two years of bruises bled into these mats. That’s certainly more ownership than you have here.”

‘Little one,’ he says. Her first instinct is to bare her teeth—she almost does—but the flash of anger lasts only a heartbeat. She reins it in; strong emotion makes the timestream flare and blur, turning clean possibilities into blinding glare. If she wants the seconds to lie open and legible, she must keep her pulse—and her pride—exact.

“Is that a dagger in your pocket,” she asks, dead-pan, “or are you simply delighted to see me?” The quip is delivered with all the warmth of pressed linen. Three quiet steps close the distance; time seems to flow around her shins like air through a vent. She lets the mirror behind him capture the move, so if he darts her peripheral vision will already be tracking. “Either way, produce it. I prefer not to fight blind—my opponents deserve a fair chance.”

Up close she notices the marks coiled at his throat: runes, etched or inked, pulsing with a muted vibrato. Her gaze flicks there, then back to his eyes. Witch? Or merely cursed? A matter to verify once the immediate calculus is settled.

She shifts her stance, bō angled across her body—neither threat nor invitation, simply protocol. “We have three ways forward,” she states, counting them off with the calm of a chess arbiter. “First, you explain yourself and depart uninjured. Second, you withdraw in silence and I escort you out. Third, you draw that blade and I neutralize the threat proportionally. I recommend the first; it keeps the janitorial budget reasonable.”

The wall clock ticks, impartial. Five seconds spool, four, three. Selene holds his stare—steady, proper, entirely prepared.

Cleo wonders at the approach, and the challenge to her empty threat does make her mouth curl into a smile that says 'maybe not but maybe not not, too' "Maybe not but you didn't go for the drumette so... mission accomplished." She says with a wink as she takes a bite from one that's maybe daintier than one might have expected.

She nods as she goes briefly back to her meal, casting a sidelong glance when the conversation resumes. "Often enough, my band plays here a lot." And werewolves hang here, a lot. It's why she walked through the doors to start with. Crazy how that had backfired - or maybe just the most likely outcome. "A couple other places around town, too, but yeah, I'm here a lot."

“Are you a drummer?” She pantomimes tapping a hi-hat on her thigh, letting the heel of her hand snap a phantom snare. A confession follows on the backbeat. “It’s the one instrument I know the least about—beyond counting eight and pretending it’s easy. I'm here... never. Not really my speed. Until tonight."

Cleo’s shoulders lift in a half-shrug, but Selene presses on, smoothing the ribbed label on her beer. “I’m not stressy.” She says, prim and proper. The word tastes juvenile, so she grimaces and reshapes it. “I’m an… empath—” her mouth quirks, self-aware of how flimsy that title sounds beneath these rafters—“who likes to people-watch in particular places.” She lets the simple answer stand, though it is a paper screen over cathedral windows.

The drumline of the crowd thunders on. Sweat-fogged lights glaze Cleo’s profile in gold; for an instant Selene sees two silhouettes overlaid—one a musician steadying a ride cymbal, the other a wolf bracing to leap. She drains a swallow of beer to drown the vertigo.

“You play here often, you said.” Selene motions to the stage where speakers loom like altar stones. “What’s the name of your band?” Futures unspool around each possible answer: neon marquees, basement gigs, a crowded van roaring toward dawn. Some versions smear red across the windshield; others glitter with city lights. She centers on the gentlest thread, the one where conversation remains talk of music and wings and nothing sharp.

"Ah. Clocks tend to elude me." Akemi said, his eyes shifting towards the clock on the wall for a brief moment. Time wasn't something that he paid attention to, really. If he wanted something, or needed to get a job done, he'd do it regardless of what time of the day it was. And in that moment, he was trying to get more information on where Tetsuya was. He wasn't going to let a locked door and the normal hours of the dojo get in the way of that.

Nor would he let this woman get in his way.

"I do not require instruction from your so called instructor." Akemi practically spat at her. "There is nothing he can teach me that I don't already know." Things that were taught to him by the man, himself. Not that she knew that. He had no intention of giving that, or anything about his life, away.

Another blossom unfurls behind it: tendon, crack, arterial spray. She chooses the quieter bloom.

“I assure you, pain and I are well acquainted,” she says, voice cool as steel left in moonlight. Selene courts pain nightly—blisters, bruises, the slow dissolution of cartilage. "But pain without grace is merely damage. We aspire to better here.”

She gestures to the mirrors, to the ghost-images of herself arrayed in infinite regress. “You’ve stepped into a temple of discipline, not a proving ground. So leave your sermon on suffering at the door with your shoes, hm?” Some snark now, because she can: “Yes, the sign outside requests both.”

The dagger hangs in her peripheral vision, bright as a comet, the future swirling around it. She feels its weight in his pocket, counts eight trajectories that end with blood on the mats. In three of them, it’s his.

“You’re trespassing,” Selene continues, brushing chalk from her fingertips. “That grants me certain liberties—calling the police, for instance, or applying more direct corrections. I prefer the former; it keeps the floors clean.”

Yet she reaches for no phone. Instead she offers a single, measured question—captor to intruder, hostess to wanderer: “Why are you here? Name what you’ve lost. If it can be found without broken bones, I may oblige. Five seconds are yours.”

Her gaze sharpens, petals converging to one blade of intent. “Waste them, and we’ll both learn precisely what my instructor has taught me.”

Alessandra was aware of a lot of things, the fact that she was pretty was something she hadn't forgotten from her old life. One of the few problems with being pretty was that it gave people this false sense that they were allowed to reach out and just touch you - a hand on the shoulder, a brush of fingertips on the arm, something barely there but still very much there. With it getting warmer she was wearing short sleeves, satin gloves donned that came to just past her wrists. Still, this motherfucker reached out in an attempt to make contact with whatever flesh they could get their greedy hands on. She felt herself about to freak out, shout at them and curse them out, when a woman swooped in and came between them, preventing it. Alessa breathed a sigh of relief, but still took a step back for safe measure. The interruption was enough for the stranger with grabby hands to back off, thankfully, and she could get back in line for her drink. "I— Thank you. Your skills of observance are at least higher than that shit for brains. I was about to crash out."

No heroes, no villains—just statistical preference. Selene selects the quietest branch and threads herself into it. Intervention is merely the path of least inconvenience here. A single pivot brings her between the grab-handed fool and the woman in satin gloves. “Sir,” she says, prim as closing prayer, “your spatial arithmetic is faulty.” He blinks at the phrasing, loses momentum, drifts off in search of easier prey.

Only then does Selene turn to the woman he nearly grazed. “Crashing out?” Her tone is bone-dry. “That might have been… theatrical.”

She notes the gloves—defense by couture—but her eyes keep moving. Future-shards flicker: a barista overfills the kettle; steam arcs toward bare skin. Selene’s palm finds the woman's elbow, gives her a sharp tug one lattice-square left. Vapor sighs into empty air.

“Stand here,” she advises, matter-of-fact. “The burn probability drops appreciably.”

who: OPEN to ALL where: The Arctic on a Friday Evening

It's funny how the lyrics and the treble vanish when she's sat on the stool behind the kit, all thuds and rat-a-t-t-tats. The drummer in any band is the unsung hero. Maybe not as unsung as the bassist, because there's a thousand posts online about how drummers don't get the credit they deserve and a thousand memes about how nobody really needs the bassist but like, you know. We suffer together and die like comrades.

Other things vanish when she's playing with The Tigs, pounding wood on mylar. Like the fact she's flirting with disaster every second of her life now. At her day job she's a walking temper time-bomb. At her night job she's literally on the menu, especially if the scuttlebutt about that one lady from Bean-Town are to be believed.

But here, behind the drums? Woo, baby. That's the sweet-spot. The one place everything's okay and she can't fuck up because nobody cares if you hit a snare a nano-second off rhythm but you. You just spin the stick and make it look like you meant to do it out of pure rebellion.

The Jam's fun, some kind of charity thing for a local shelter called New Moon and it's focusing woman-led music acts. It's a forty-five minute set and then bam-pow, it's time to clear out and let the next band take its turn. After that, she's at the bar opposite the more mental part of the Arctic's mosh-pit. The whole place smells like wolf, and that's good because she can sell it as homework to the Fellowship and she can sell it as just another Friday night to everyone else, wolf or otherwise.

Oh, another thing that isn't awful - this massive honkin' pile of 10 cent wings that just landed in front of her alongside the coldest looking beer she's ever seen. She makes a friendly, wide-eyed look of excitement to the person beside her.

"Want one? You may have..." she holds a finger up. "... One wing. Flapper only, the drums are mine and you will lose a finger."

Thirty-two minutes in, her temples already throb. She palms the tin of pills in her coat, debating the dosage that will buy her half an hour more without making her hands shake. Her other hand grips her beer line an anchor. That’s when the drummer slides into the next stool with a mountain of wings and a grin built for trouble.

Want one? You may have… one wing. Flapper only, the drums are mine and you will lose a finger.

Selene’s vision splinters. In three futures the threat is a joke; in one the drummer actually brandishes a fork like a dirk; in none does Selene’s finger end up on the floor. Underneath those splinters of possibility she feels the woman’s rhythm—snare-tight pulse, eighth notes tapping in her wrists, a heartbeat that loops in steady 4/4. Selene’s own breath syncs on the off-beats, the world briefly scoring itself to this private metronome. Empty theater. Interesting. Most strangers feel like a hive of maybes. This one is almost restful—only four strong branches instead of the usual tangle. It’s why she takes up the offer. A rare, quiet geometry. She needs a break from unspooling on unspooling. “I don’t think you really mean that.” Selene says. Short. Crisp. In the way she does most things.

She studies the offered flapper as if it might bear runes, and sinks her teeth into the crisp skin. Heat, smoke, vinegar—good. “Oh,” she allows. It’s the most honest sound she can manage without committing to any deeper truths about herself. Why did she take it? Curiosity, perhaps; the gravitational pull of neat probability. She offers up her beer with some hesitation. An offer means a million new paths unfolding. Does she want that right now? And yet - “Do you come here often?”

It hadn't taken Akemi long to figure out where his former Master might be in such a small town. He owned a fucking dojo. Adorable, really. A God, pretending to only be a teacher. He considered it a bit cocky, especially since Tetsuya had to know that he was being hunted. How could he not? Akemi had managed to find him a century ago and he'd vowed to do it again. Sure, it had taken time but Akemi was a patient man. That, and he'd found other powerful witches to take out along the way.

With the moon high in the sky, Akemi used skills that were taught to him at a young age. The metal of the lock hummed, practically begging him to take it apart and open the door. It was a trick he could do with his eyes closed.

Akemi wasn't sure what he expected to find when he opened the door. Darkness, mostly. Mats on the ground, spread out for his students. He hadn't expected to find someone there. His eyes narrowed as his bare feet drifted across the ground towards her. He rarely wore shoes. They made too much fucking noice. Especially when he was on a hunt.

His head tilted to the side as he called upon his dagger, wrapping his fingers around the handle inside of his pocket. "It's a bit late to be training, is it not?"

The door glides open, and suddenly, possibility splinters like lacquer: twelve petals, each a heartbeat ahead. In one, the stranger’s dagger finds her ribs; in another, she fractures his wrist before the blade inhales air. Five seconds spool and unspool. She watches herself die, survive, parry, retreat—an entire waltz of outcomes blooming and falling away. Absurd—steel in a room built for sweat and breath. Is he here to carve wooden dummies, or does he fancy carving her? What the fuck is the dagger’s endgame, midnight fencer?

He speaks. A row of futures shift, probability tilting toward blood. Selene exhales, steadying the fan. She lets her focus narrow to the here-and-now—five crisp seconds of clarity, enough.

“Thank you for the concern,” she answers, stepping just off the dagger’s cleanest arc. Her voice is polite to the point of insolence, each consonant placed like a chess piece. “I can read a clock, I recommend you learn to do the same. The dojo closed an hour ago. If you require instruction, come back with the sunrise class.”

Another blossom drops: he lunges, she pivots, he bleeds. She notes it, files it away.

Moonlight scrawls silver bars across the floor; she aligns her stance inside them, a dancer marking her spike onstage. With a flick of her wrist she loosens the tape around her toes—tiny, deliberate motions that say I’m not afraid, only annoyed.

“I recommend shoes,” she adds, gaze flicking to his bare feet. “Splinters are unforgiving.” She lets that hang, an offering or a warning, even she isn’t sure.

Five seconds pulse. The universe inhales. Selene waits to see which petal will open next—and whether it will be edged in steel or mercy.